Byron, George Gordon

Autograph Note Signed, initials, one page, oblong octavo, July 28, 1813. [To John Murray.] “The enclosed lines you will insert in paragraph named after the line ‘That wakes and wafts the fragrance there.'”

The verse quoted by George Byron comes from his poem, The Giaour, which was published by John Murray on June 5, 1813. In the first edition the verse read, “That wakes and wafts the odours there;” but in the second edition, which appeared at the end of June or the beginning of July, the word “odours” was changed to “fragrances.” This was one of many revisions to the poem that Byron made, the most important being the addition of the famous passage being, “He that hath bent him o’er the dead.” But the poet was not content with the second version, as this note indicates. “Throughout July and August, Byron had been busily engaged in writing and sending off to Murray additions and emendations…which the ‘Anak of stationers,’ as Byron called him, was willing enough to receive, for the poem was selling rapidly, and the purple passages of the added matter, as well as the hints of secret crimes which rumor was now willing to ascribe to the author, increased the public interest. Three new editions, the third, fourth and fifth, each with large additions to the text (the fifth had nearly double the number of lines of the first edition), appeared before the end of August. On the 26th, Byron wrote: ‘I have, but with some difficulty, not added any more to the snake of a poem which has been lengthening its rattles every month'” (Marchand, Byron).